The End Game

Sam liked Walt, thought he was a nice enough fellow, a good American, all that, but he got the feeling Walt hadn’t turned on a television since Reagan left office. That wasn’t punishable, but watching him eat runny scrambled eggs might have been, which he’d been doing for the last fifteen minutes. Three times the waitress had brought over a plate of eggs, and three times Walt had sent it back after a few bites, saying the consistency wasn’t right, until finally the waitress brought over a serving that made Sam seriously ponder vegetarianism for a few moments.

“All that’s missing are the feathers,” Sam said.

“You overcook scrambled eggs,” Walt said, “you lose all the iron.”

Sam didn’t think that was true, didn’t even know if eggs contained iron, but at this point didn’t even really care. Two Tums from now and this whole nauseating aspect of the experience would be rectified. Besides, there wasn’t a better computer security guy in all of Miami than Walt, even though by the looks of him now, in his country club windbreaker and yellow polo shirt, he was probably spending most of his time on a putting green. He was one of those guys who looked like he was fifty when he was twenty-five, from all that time spent sitting around dark rooms, analyzing data on a computer screen, which made Sam wonder just how old Walt really was, since now the poor guy looked damn near dead, albeit relaxed, in his new retired state. He noticed Walt even had dentures now. Weird, because the last time they’d done work together was just a few months previous, and the guy had a full mouth of god-given teeth.

“Listen, Big Walt,” Sam said, “I’ve got a top-secret mission I need some help on.”

“If it’s so top secret,” Walt said, “why are you coming to a private citizen like me?”

“That’s how secret it is,” Sam said, “even people in government are suspect.”

That seemed to satisfy Walt, or at least found a spot in his ego that was sufficiently inured from actual truth. Anyway, working with ex-NSA guys was always a bit of a pain in the ass. They just knew a lot more than other people. But that was okay, Sam thought, since it gave someone like Walt something to be proud of in addition to his penchant for eating, essentially, the moderately warmed ovum of a chicken. And it wasn’t like Walt was feeding information directly to Rumsfeld back when they were both still employed, anyway. Walt’s job was your basic low-level computer security gig at the NSA, like tracking minor threats on things like the Eastern Interconnected System power grid and calls about suspected terrorists with MySpace pages. Nine to five, no weekends, no direct knowledge of Dick Cheney’s whereabouts at any given time, but a business card that said NSA, which was pretty good for getting people to waive late charges at Blockbuster.

Sam showed Walt the Web site and the video, which Sam noted had been updated since the night before. There was even more footage now.

“Don’t tell me this is some kind of pornography,” Walt said, shoving Sam’s laptop away at the first sight of the woman and child.

“No, no, nothing like that,” Sam said.

“Because I’m here to tell you that pornography leads to terrorism. Studies have proven this.”

The other pain-in-the-ass aspect of working with ex-NSA is that a lot of them were desperately odd people who’d spent their best years scared out of their minds by the shit they’d witnessed, even if they witnessed it on the computer or through secondary reports.

“Agreed, totally,” Sam said. Sometimes it’s just better to not argue over the peccadilloes of the retired. Sam explained to Walt the bare bones of the issues-which is to say he decided to just make everything up. “The woman in this video is the princess of Moldavia, as you know,” he said, “and we have reason to believe that she’s being tracked by Carpathians intent on harming her and her crown. But it’s not entirely certain where these evildoers are currently operating out of.”

Walt nodded and took another mouthful of egg and then broke off a piece of toast and dunked it into the liquid. “Interesting,” he said. “Haven’t seen anything on the news about this.”

“Very hush-hush,” Sam said. When he’d done some work with Walt in the past, he was upset to learn that Walt was one of those people who liked to lecture others about alcohol consumption before certain hours, which was too bad since Sam now couldn’t get it out of his mind what an injustice it was that he was up this early and couldn’t reasonably order a Bloody Mary without drawing undo attention. Sam thought it would make this meeting a lot less mentally taxing, never mind dulling the sounds of Walt’s chewing, which included a troubling amount of whistling. “I need to get some tracking on this site, get an idea of who is viewing it, who is uploading it, access points, whatever you can find out. The safety of Moldavia depends on it.”